She sat there and stared, her eyes dull and glassy. She sighed. Her feelings were as dull as her eyes, like a knife that has been used too much. Her thoughts were slow, and to reach each one was like swimming through molasses.  Sometimes it was too much of an effort to reach them, and they flitted away from her on the breeze that brushed her ash blond hair across her face. She sat on the porch and stared at the lovely garden and evergreen trees, not really enjoying them at all.

 

“God,” she begins a prayer, but doesn’t finish. Reaching Heaven is more difficult than reaching her thoughts sometimes. It’s like swimming through quicksand, at any moment, knowing you could be pulled down, and never moving very fast. “When will it end?” she manages to whisper. Gathering the strength to say the words is difficult, physically and emotionally.

 

A stray thought comes into her mind. “They tell me to speak good things over myself, but how can I do that when I don’t have the energy to speak?”  And then , “Won’t You hear me even when I can’t fight? Won’t You fight for me when I can’t fight for myself?”

 

She picks up her IPOD and puts the headphones in her ears. Casting Crowns’ “Praise You in This Storm” comes on. Perfect timing. Life is a storm, but God is still worthy of praise. She knows that. If she could muster up the energy to praise, then maybe she could muster up the energy to fight, to break free of the lethargy and apathy that has been holding her prisoner for so long.

 

Of course, she muses, the apathy may be preferable to the other side of the coin—the sharpened knife. Sometimes the pain and agony were so unbearable, she wanted to die. The only thing that stopped her from killing herself was knowing that she had given her life to God years ago, and she refused to take it back. Her life was not hers to take. It was God’s.

 

Still, the apathy was awful. Joy, she missed joy. She missed feeling the Presence of God. She had felt it recently. A slight reminder of all she didn’t have at the moment. Not that she didn’t want to feel it again, or that the reminder was painful. Nothing about the Presence of God was ever painful, except the apparent lack of it. She knew, oh she knew, that God was always, always with her. But she didn’t always feel it. In fact, she rarely felt it nowadays. And she missed it.

 

She wished she had more faith. She believed God could and would heal her of her clinical depression someday. Someday, but never today. Never now. Always in the distant future. And what good was that? How does the future help the present? What good is eternal expectation when it never seems to be realized? Why can’t there ever be any joy in the present?

 

The song ended, and she picked up her notebook and pencil and began to write.

 

 

Oh, Lord, won’t you come back

And take away the sorrow

The pain of just existing

The burden of tomorrow

           

Sick of being sick

And tired of being sad

Why is life always awful?

Why is life so bad?

 

She heard people talk about living in the moment, instead of always looking to the future for joy, instead of looking forward to Heaven, walking in joy in the present. But there was no joy in the present. Only despair. Or at best, dullness. Her eyes closed slightly. “Who wants to live in this moment anyway?”

 

She opened her eyes slightly. She shouldn’t sleep so much, she knew. Fourteen hours of sleep was resting, she supposed, but useless. Sleep was a good escape from the pain of the world, from the responsibilities of the world, from the world. But she did the Kingdom no good asleep.

 

“I do the Kingdom no good awake, either,” she thought, wondering if that thought was her own or a lie of the Enemy. Perhaps she did something good by living, but she didn’t really see what. She knew God had created her for a reason, for a purpose, but she had yet to discern what that might be. And she secretly feared she would never fulfill it. Especially in her current state of seemingly endless depression.

 

Not that she really cared what she did for others at the moment. It was all she could do to deal with her own problems. Plus, no one else seemed to care about her. She was so lonely. Always lonely. Perhaps she could talk to God and feel less lonely, but then, praying was so hard right now.

 

“You have the victory already,” she thought, remembering a Revelation she had gotten from the Father a few months ago. God was unchanging and perfect, so He had already won. She was on His side. So she had also already won.

 

“What is victory?” she asked. “It certainly doesn’t make you feel any better.” She then wondered if she would ever feel better. What if her lot in life was to attempt to glorify God with this thousand pound burden of depression tied around her neck. How could she possibly ever succeed in that?

 

Yet there were those who expected just that. That she “get out and do something.” As if that would solve anything. As if the reason she were depressed was because she was sedentary, instead of the other way around. As if the depression were somehow her fault. How dare they condemn her? They were wrong. Yet their lies, like those of the Enemy, got to her sometimes. 

 

Tears began to run down her cheeks. What if they were right, and it never, ever would get any easier, and she had to glorify God anyway? What if she had to exert this huge amount of effort just to live for the rest of her life…and was expected to add even more effort than that which she was already exerting? What if God were displeased with her? Yet what could she do, what more could she do? She fought, she fought so much, so hard, so often. But she was so tired. So, so tired.

 

She wiped her eyes. Fight. Fight more. Fight harder. Fight. All of life is a fight.

 

“Every day is a struggle against the Evil One. Every day you must fight him with words, prayer, prophecy, obedience to God, and anything that might glorify God and ruin the Enemy’s day. Every day you put on the full Armor of God and go to war. Every day is a battle. Some days are easier than others, and you may not even know you’re fighting. But even when you’re joyous, that is something that ruins the Enemy’s day,” she thought, quoting another Revelation she’d had.

 

Her whispered prophecy was part faith, part prayer, and part plea. “I am a person of joy.” She had spoken. God would have to do the rest. Because right now, she didn’t have the energy or capacity to do more for herself.

 

I wish this story were more interesting. More entertaining. More hopeful. I wish all stories could end on a happy note and have the main character fight and overcome all odds. But this is a true story, though it is not over yet, and sometimes the happy endings must wait a while. 

Tags: Short Story